Chapter 31
31
‘I’m sorry.’
‘What are you sorry for, Mr Donoghue?’ Monday morning and I was back in the drama studio, even more Arctic now that Jobsworth had turned off all the heating over the weekend, despite the icy conditions and thus the real threat of burst frozen pipes. I turned to Mason, who was hanging back at the entrance looking sheepish.
‘I should have told you,’ Mason said, obviously embarrassed but coming into the studio and walking over to me. ‘Hell, it’s cold in here.’
‘Told me what? That you were having a bit of a thing with a rival head teacher? At the same time as with me? At least you’re hedging your bets, going for a bit of variety: a head teacher and a lowly supply teacher.’
Mason hesitated. ‘Bit more than having a bit of a thing with Angel…’ he began.
‘Angel?’ I started to laugh. ‘Not even Angela?’ I laughed again. ‘ Angel Liversedge?’
‘Angel Donoghue actually.’
‘What?’ I stared at the man in front of me. ‘Ms Liversedge is your wife ?’
Mason nodded. ‘I’m sorry, I should have come clean about it with you. With all the staff really. And, the thing is…’
‘You’re no longer estranged?’
‘That obvious?’
‘Mason, your fork was just about down her – rather magnificent, I’ll admit – cleavage at the restaurant. How obvious does it have to get?’
‘You’re upset?’
‘Upset?’ I didn’t need any time to reflect on the question as I’d been trying to work out just how I felt all weekend. ‘Erm, disappointed, I suppose.’
‘Ooff, not good.’ Mason offered up a conciliatory smile. ‘I used to hate it when my father said my behaviour disappointed him.’
‘And did it?’
‘Often. Particularly, you know, my going into teaching rather than following him into medicine.’
‘So why on earth does no one on the staff know you were – you are – married to… to Angel ?’
‘The governors know, I think Petra suspects, but, really, it’s nothing to do with anyone. My private business.’
‘Right. Well, you certainly have kept it private.’ I didn’t know what else to say.
‘You will stay, won’t you, Robyn?’
‘Stay? What, with you? Carry on with the relationship we were sort of having?’
‘No, obviously that’s not going to continue.’
‘Obviously!’ I wanted to laugh out loud at that. The arrogance of the man! That this conceited bloke might consider I wanted to continue any relationship with him while he was back with his wife was laughable.
‘St Mede’s needs you…’ he now started.
‘Oh, give me a break, Mason. This school does not need me. What it needs is a kick up the pants. Or a demolition order.’
‘I’m still trying to do the first,’ Mason said. ‘And I really think we’re getting somewhere. This production, you know…’ he trailed off, but I wasn’t prepared to make it easy for him ‘…we can still work on it together?’
‘Absolutely! Why wouldn’t we? Just because you’re shagging your ex-wife, sorry, estranged -wife, I see no reason to take it out on the kids.’
Mason visibly winced at the crude language but said, ‘Thank you.’
‘You’re welcome. Now, if you don’t mind, the only way I’m going to get warm is to move.’
‘You’re right, you’re right. Sorry, Robyn…’ Mason trailed off and then, taking my hand, he said, ‘Look, we had a good time together, didn’t we? You and me? There for each other when the one we really wanted wasn’t around?’
‘Sorry?’ I stared. ‘Is that supposed to make me feel better? That I was a… a comfort blanket when your favourite duvet had fallen off your bed?’
‘What?’ Mason’s mouth twitched and I wanted to laugh myself at the ridiculous analogy I’d come up with. ‘Look, Robyn, I really fancied you…’ He moved towards me and put out a hand. ‘Still do, of course.’ He stroked my arm and I looked down at it pointedly before giving him the same look I offered up to recalcitrant Year 7s who’d crossed a boundary. Mason hurriedly dropped his hand. ‘What I mean is, I know, deep down, you’re still in love with this London barrister bloke.’
‘No, I’m not ,’ I snapped crossly. ‘I most certainly am not .’
‘And if he came knocking at your door…’
‘Like the Angel Loversedge came a-knocking at yours?’ Every time I uttered her ridiculous handle, I found myself about to snort with glee. ‘Lo, she appeared before you, saying: “Verily, Mason, you are the chosen one…”’ I started to giggle. ‘Blimey, good job she never went off and married Peter Gabriel.’
Ignoring me, Mason went on, ‘A chance meeting at AA.’
‘You’re both alcoholics? Well, you kept that quiet.’
‘Alcoholics?’ It was Mason’s turn to stare. ‘Where’ve you got that from? A chance meeting at AAH: Amalgamated Association of Head Teachers. Look, Robyn, all I’m saying is, if you had a second chance with this barrister bloke – mind you, I can understand you refusing to have anything to do with a bastard who’s on the side of another bastard who tortures, rapes and murders women?—’
‘Enough!’ I put up both hands in Mason’s direction, furious with him for reminding me of the awful decision Fabian had made to defend Rupert Henderson-Smith.
‘All I’m saying—’ Mason refused to let it go ‘—is that if he appeared here, this morning, you’d listen to him.’
‘I most certainly would not ,’ I snapped. ‘ I’ve moved on. I’ve had the strength of character to know when a relationship is irretrievably broken. One can never go back,’ I added loftily. ‘I would never go back to him. Now, if you don’t mind, I need to get on.’
‘Yes, fine. Don’t forget Focus North is here on Wednesday,’ he reminded me. ‘I’ll arrange cover for all your lessons so that you can be down here all morning. I’ll try and get Kenneth to have the heating running constantly before tomorrow.’
‘Good luck with that one.’
‘He’ll want to interview you, you know?’
‘Who? Jobsworth Ken?’
‘No! The bloke in charge of the Focus North feature. You’ll really go for it, won’t you? Really sell yourself? Tell them you’re a West End star.’
‘But I’m not,’ I said irritably.
‘You were . All impressive stuff. Telly features like this will help boost our numbers. I’d like St Mede’s to be designated a performing arts school.’
‘In your dreams, Mason.’ I almost laughed in his face. ‘But don’t worry, I’ll really sell the school because the kids, more than anyone, deserve that if nothing else.’
So, was I upset? Had I been telling Mason the truth when I’d said the only emotion I was feeling was disappointment? Certainly, I was feeling something akin to regret, but I think it probably boiled down to a sense of embarrassment that I’d allowed myself to be seduced and that I’d then been usurped by a bountifully bosomed angel. Angel, my backside! I couldn’t help grinning to myself as I conjured up the best way to relate her name to Jess and Sorrel.
Once Mason had left the studio (I didn’t think for one moment his apparent self-reproach on being caught with his ex-wife would last even down the corridor and back to his office) I started to stretch and limber up. Things were looking promising, my knee allowing me to consider moves I’d not dared to just a week earlier. I blasted out Walk the Moon’s ‘Shut Up and Dance’ on the crappy sound system – this studio definitely needed a new one – and, slowly at first, I started swaying, bending, rolling, and before I knew it, I was dancing again. Really dancing. Sod bloody Mason Donoghue. I grinned to myself as I step-touched and shimmied, turned and leapt and then, before thinking better of it, started a full, no-holding-back, extravagant routine to the music.
Mason, I considered as I soared, could never have been the love of my life, had no way touched my soul as Fabian had. Maybe, I thought as I covered every inch of floor, we only ever have the chance of one great love in this life of ours. That after knowing, and then losing, a perfect love, one is forever chasing an unobtainable high.
Dance would be my high, I vowed and as, sweating and slightly trembly, I slowed and came to a standstill, and a chorus of applause came from the door where my first class of the day was waiting and watching, I knew I was going to be heading back to London: to the life I’d left behind, to dance professionally once more.
‘You’re looking very… very…’ I couldn’t quite work out what Jobsworth Ken was actually looking when, two days later, the drama studio had become a hive of activity around the cameraman and sound recordist deciding the best positions for their equipment and apparatus. Ken was being officiously but smarmily protective of both the visitors and the drama studio, one minute brown-nosing in the manner of Uriah Heep with the Focus North presenter before turning to glare and bark at the kids who’d gone AWOL from registration in the hope of catching themselves on telly and who were now springing, in the manner of Masai warriors, at the windows into the studio from both outside in the yard and inside along the corridors.
A toupee! Of course! Jobsworth Ken had donned a gingery-coloured hairpiece to hide his balding pate and, wanting to laugh, I turned to Petra to share the revelation.
But Petra, beginning to lose her rag with the kids, was, with dire threats, attempting to send them back to their classes so appeared to be in no mood for a laugh. Mason, in his best navy three-piece suit, burgundy tie and polished brogues was ingratiating himself with the Focus North team, explaining how the school was hoping to become a designated performing arts school under the direction of St Mede’s professional West End musical theatre performer: i.e. me.
Oh, but he was a smooth talker, determined that people should fall in line with his ideas before, I was now beginning to realise, he became bored with that particular whim and moved on, flitting erratically to something else that caught his eye and his restless energy.
Mason Donoghue the butterfly.
I stood and watched, quite objectively, rather enjoying the performance Mason was putting on for the benefit of the Focus North team, until he turned and called me over, introducing me to Leanna Pottinger, the programme’s director and presenter, as ‘our resident expert in musical theatre, direct from a stint in the West End’.
I spent the morning under direction from Leanna, a tiny vivacious woman I liked enormously and who appeared to want to make me central to the five-minute clip that would go out that evening. The kids were brilliant, waiting their turn, showcasing their moves and explaining how their lives had been transformed with the arrival of a proper London performer at the school, and how they were turning away from hanging round the Co-op car park every evening, now that they had true meaning to their lives.
They’d obviously been well tutored by Mason about what to say and, after a particularly sycophantic outpouring from one Year 9 kid, I turned to glare in Mason’s direction where he stood with the group of Pink Ladies who were about to perform for the camera, throwing up my hands in despair and mouthing ‘Over the top!’ at him.
Despite having had only five weeks learning the score and the moves, I was hugely proud of their efforts, giving the thumbs-up as they trooped off from being filmed, high-fiving each other in their excitement.
‘We’ve been practising in Mia’s dad’s hen hut,’ Isla Boothroyd whispered as they came back towards me, their faces glowing, their bodies still excitedly and compulsively moving.
‘Didn’t the hens mind?’ I laughed.
‘No, they loved it!’ Isla said seriously. ‘Thought we were really good.’ She wiped the sheen of sweat from her brow. ‘Miss,’ she went on, ‘I’m going to do this when I leave school. I’m so-o-o-o-o glad you came to teach here.’
‘Me too,’ Fatima Khan added, turning to hug me. ‘You’re great, miss. Best teacher here. You won’t go off back to London, will you?’
‘Thank you, girls,’ I said, genuinely touched. ‘And good for you, Isla,’ I went on. ‘You stick to your dreams, and you’ll get there.’
‘Well, your Sorrel’s doing all right, isn’t she?’
We all turned to the centre of the drama studio where Sorrel was limbering up, dressed in the skintight black trousers and top Olivia Newton-John, playing Sandy, wore for the iconic dance with John Travolta. Adjusting the blonde curly wig – God knew where she’d found it – she sashayed over to the camera, pouted, said, ‘Tell me about it, stud,’ before taking off her jacket and flinging it towards the edge of the room. She made love to the camera, grinding out her cigarette prop with her red high heel and dancing so professionally, so fantastically, we all just stood and stared.
My little sister was going to go far.
I felt the tears start, knew I’d never been as good as Sorrel, knew that if the clip was shown on Focus North that evening, she’d be able to download it and show it at her interview and audition at the Susan Yates Theatre School the following month.
‘You were fabulous,’ I whispered as she came towards me, pulling off the wig as she did so.
‘Was I OK?’ she breathed, her eyes shining while the Pink Ladies crowded round her, congratulating and patting her like Premier League footballers after one of their team has scored a winning goal. ‘Oh, hell,’ she snapped as Blane, having previously derided any coming performance of Grease as ‘fucking bollocks’, had obviously snuck out of his class, donned the blonde curly wig and was now attempting a ludicrous Egyptian sand dance in front of the camera. ‘Get him off.’
Without hesitation, the pair of us descended, laughing, on the skinny lad and, taking an arm each, removed Whippety from the studio, praying the cameraman had stopped filming before he’d taken centre stage.